Entries tagged with dad

As I said in my previous entry, yesterday was the one year anniversary of Dad's death, and today we got a card from the Patient & Family Support Team at the hospice saying that they're still there for us as long as we need them. I doubt we will but it's really nice to know that the option is there.

Also today Mum and I went to give blood and everything went smoothly this time. Although, Tilly wasn't very happy about us going. I think she thought we were taking her on a walk cos she ran to the front door and seemed so excited. It was actually rather difficult getting her back in the living room so we could leave and I felt so guilty!

I am still working on my Twentieth Century Ships list and I'm hoping it will be up soon. I haven't made any more progress on it over the weekend though cos yesterday Mum and I dismantled our old dining room table and made up the new one we'd bought from the internet. It's a rather huge farmhouse style thing that takes over most of the room! I'm really liking the size though, cos it's lovely to have so much space. The old table was rather slim and I often felt cramped using it. This one is a good size for jigsaw building!

My brother came up to visit us this weekend too. I think it was because today is the one year anniversary of Dad's death. It was nice to have all three of us together. We didn't do anything special to mark the date, but we were all aware of what it was.

Once again I've been away from LJ for a while, mostly because I've been busy with Probate stuff and tidying the house and when I do go online I want something mindless like reblogging stuff on Tumblr or reading endless Buzzfeed posts. But I also need somewhere to write and get my thoughts down properly, so here we go:

Probate stuff is coming along. Rob and I are joint executors of Dad's estate and we're contacting various banks and organisations to get all the information together in order to apply for Probate. It's mostly going all right, although I did get a letter back from someone saying that they'd checked their records and had found no accounts under that name and I'm just like "Oh really? Then why do I have this letter from your very department, dated February this year, addressed to my dad and talking about his account?" Ugh.

The tidying the house thing is a bit weird too. I think it must be a reaction to the grief because I've always been a pretty messy person and a bit of a hoarder. (I'm the kind of person who watches the show Hoarders in order to feel better about myself because at least I'm not that bad!) But now I'm in CLEAN ALL THE THINGS mode, as well as THROW AWAY ALL THE THINGS YOU KEPT BECAUSE YOU TOLD YOURSELF THEY'D BE USEFUL IN THE FUTURE BUT IT'S TIME TO ADMIT THEY WON'T BE AND JUST GET RID OF THEM mode. I quite like it actually and hope that I can keep it up because it would be great to have a house where things are actually tidy and I can get to what I want easily.

So mostly I feel like things are going ok and I'm not doing too badly. Or at least I did until earlier today when I had a bit of a breakdown at work and now I feel stupid and embarrassed about it.

One of my managers was having a go at me for not fully explaining the feedback cards when I hand them out and I got upset and argued back, which then made him get even more annoyed and started threatening me with a disciplinary and whatever. I wish I could have remained rational, because I do have actual reasons why I think he was being unfair, but it just upset me so much because the managers were going on about these stupid feedback cards back in March when Dad was dying and bringing them up again felt like bringing everything about that time up again. Maybe that's silly and probably doesn't make sense to a lot of people, but it's how I feel and I genuinely was really, seriously upset.

But I do also think it was unfair, because back in March my main manager specifically said I just had to hand out the cards. That was it. He didn't say start with just handing out the cards for now. He said just hand out the cards, that's all that's required. And so, I took him at his word and believed that that was all that was required. But now apparently that's not enough. I really hate moving goalposts. You can't tell me I have to do x and then get mad at me for not doing x and y. And if you are going to change the rules, you have to then explain that to me. Not aggressively moan at me for not doing something that I had been told wasn't required.

So yeah, I don't think he was being fair but I know that by reacting the way I did I've lost a lot of credibility and that really annoys me. (But, tbh, I also feel like it's not unreasonable for me to expect a bit of leeway? He went on about how this is the same for everyone and I kinda feel like I shouldn't be held to the same expectations as everyone else right now. Is that wrong? I mean it's been less than two months since Dad died and I kinda feel like the message here is that I should be over it already.)

I'm not looking forward to going in tomorrow but I'm going to try and smooth things over. My initial urge was just to quit and find something else, but I know this is the wrong time to be making decisions like that. And I have no confidence in myself and my ability to find a new job anyway.

It's been exactly a month since Dad died and I know that's a pretty arbitrary milestone, but it still weighed quite heavily on me today. Things weren't helped by the fact that one of my colleagues had set up a static bike ride today to raise money for Macmillan. It's not that I object to the concept of raising money for a cancer charity, of course, but seeing the word 'cancer' all around the place felt like the universe was conspiring to rub my face in it all day.

Then this afternoon I set up the new Sky box that Mum had ordered to replace our one that had been getting rather flaky lately. It didn't have the same RF ports on the back that the old one had, which was a problem cos we'd used them in order to get signal to all the other TVs in the house (not just Sky, the normal digital signal was routed through it as well, so it was pretty important!) I managed to work out what I needed to do to sort it out and felt very proud of myself. But I also almost burst into tears because I kept thinking that Dad would know what to do, if only I could ask him, and it was just another reminder that I'll never be able to ask him anything ever again.

Dad died on the 19th. He made it almost two months longer than the doctor thought he would. And he was at home the whole time, which is what he wanted. I suppose I should be grateful for that but I mostly just want to scream at the universe for how cruel and unfair it is.

A lady from the Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice came round this morning to talk to us. She was very nice and told us what services they offer, both for Dad and for us. She mentioned counselling and I'm sort of tempted but I'm so bad at talking to people I'd have no idea what to say. Still, it's good to know that it's an option.

Then this afternoon Dad went to his private appointment with the Hepatology professor. And from the sounds of it it went better than the other appointments have gone. There was talk about getting Dad into a trial, but apparently it's a bit too early yet (I'm not entirely sure what that means.) And he took some blood cos he wants to run his own tests and wants to see Dad again next week. I'm just so relieved that someone is actually doing something, that there's the possibility of hope, rather than just giving up like the other doctors did.